As long as the cert chains back to a root CA that is accepted everywhere, there's really nothing of value to separate the various vendors, except the purchasing

As long as the cert chains back to a root CA that is accepted everywhere, there's really nothing of value to separate the various vendors, except the purchasing price. Unfortunately, ssl is a game where bad CAs ruin it for everyone, not just their customers: It does not matter for an attacker where they got a bogus certificate as long as it is considered valid, and there's little you can do to protect against it, certainly not by paying more or spending more effort on validation of your own cert. ("EV" (which is what the CAs really should have been doing all this time) and cert pinning comes to mind)